Documents as sources of data

The mass media provides a wide range of sources of documentary data, from newspaper and magazine articles to films, television programmes and the music press. All of these sources are available in the public domain. Answers (a), (b) and (d) all point to documents that can be used in research but they are not examples of mass media.
Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 554-555

Scott (1990, cited on page 546) distinguishes between personal and official (private or state owned) documents, but argues that they can all be evaluated using the four criteria of ‘authenticity’: “is the evidence genuine?”; ‘credibility’: “is the evidence free from error?”; ‘representativeness’: “is the evidence typical?” and ‘meaning'” is the evidence clear and comprehensible?”
Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 546

Whereas quantitative content analysis usually involves counting the number of times a particular word or theme appears in a text, qualitative analysis adheres more to the principles of grounded theory: conceptual ideas emerge from the data, so that the researcher is constantly involved in revising themes or categories emerging from the document analysis. It can be argued that qualitative content analysis allows the researcher to “discover” new ways of interpreting the text.
Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 563

“Thinking deeply” 23.1, on page 550, highlights the various roles of photographs in social research. They may be used as illustrations, or prompts, or sources of data in themselves. In the latter case, these visual images are interesting not only in terms of their manifest content but also for what they reveal about the way people selectively retain and represent the past. Although photographs can be made purely for research purposes, the emphasis here is on extant photographs in archives and personal collections. Again, the issue of representativeness is a problem.
Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 550

There is some debate over the extent to which audiences respond actively or passively to texts in the mass media, but it is generally accepted that people can make various different interpretations of a cultural text. This is particularly significant insofar as audience readings of a document may be quite different from those intended by its creator. Some readers may accept the statements in the text as they are stated; others may attempt to resist them or incorporate them into a separate interpretation. We are reminded, here, of advice given to dissertation writers concerning the ‘critical’ reading of texts for the purposes of a literature review.
Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 560,561

The selective retention of letters, diaries and autobiographies from historical periods reflects the social conditions of the time. For example, the introduction of the penny post in the nineteenth century may have led to more letters being written, but this would have been counteracted by the limited availability of education and literacy skills. Consequently, the documents available from the period in question are not representative of the population as a whole, being written by a subset only. A further complication arises when we consider why certain letters have been kept while others, presumably, have been destroyed. A feminist perspective would notice the relatively low proportion of letters extant from that period written by women, since boys were more likely than girls to have received an education at that time.
Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 548

“Virtual data” from the Internet, email and other forms of computer-mediated communication (CMC), provide a wealth of opportunities for documentary research. However, the unregulated nature of most CMC, together with the lack of visual clues to a writer’s identity, combine to make it easy for people to assume an alternative identity when they publish on the Internet. The ‘authenticity’ criterion asks if the evidence is genuine. Unfortunately, with much internet data the answer can only be “we don’t know”. Furthermore, since many websites are of a commercial nature, we cannot be sure about the credibility issue either.
Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 556

According to Scott (1990) authenticity is concerned with the integrity of the origin of evidence. Whilst autobiographies purport to be written by an author about themselves, they cannot simply be taken at face-value as a ‘window to the soul’. In some cases, they may have been ghost-written; in others they might have been heavily edited. They also might have been written with a specific purpose or focus in mind. As such, the authenticity of the document needs to be considered in order to understand the context by which it was created.
Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 547

Semiotics is a branch of social science research that focuses on the way symbols and signs are used in everyday life. This might involve studying the way visual images function as “signs” in a cultural text (objects and images as well as documents), referring not only to specific objects at a superficial level but also to underlying “deep structures” of the social world. It can be seen as an approach to analysis of data, as well as a subject area in its own right. The word should not be thought of as Latin ‘semi-‘, in the sense of ‘half’, but as Greek ‘sem(e)i-‘, meaning ‘sign’.
Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 565

Official documents can derive from the state or from private sources, and may or may not be available in the public domain. They contain information that is produced in the course of the everyday work of an organization or other official agency, and have not been produced for the purposes of social research. There can be an issue of credibility with these documents, stemming from the purpose for which they were produced. Detecting the nature of the bias in this documentation can be a rewarding research pursuit.
Reference: Bryman: Social Research Methods: 5th Edition Page(s) 552-554